VacationSelector

Mexico City or Philadelphia?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Mexico City and Philadelphia are level on 0.
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance247 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 11 points.11
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1791,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1535
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 19 points.19
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score7960
Museums within 10 km13889
Museums within 2 km of centre6548
Share of museums within 2 km %4754
Unesco sites within 50 km61
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 19 points.19
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score7859
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4362
Nightclubs within 4 km19841
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 14 points.14
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score6349
Protected land share 50 km %3014
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km32 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 3 points.3
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score5053
Tourist attractions within 2 km2316
Park area within 2 km32 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Mexico City and Philadelphia are level on 54.
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score5454
Notable places within 2 km8888
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 33 points.33
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score7643
Price level global54.2100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 30 points.30
Mexico CityPhiladelphia
Score9060
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months60
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CityPhiladelphia
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
CancunCUN
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
San Jose Del CaboSJD
2 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 50 m
€883-934
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureMexico CityPhiladelphia
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation2,240 m12 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CityPhiladelphia
City population9,209,9441,603,797
People per km²6,2024,339
Museums within 10 km10854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre5075

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Mexico City or Philadelphia somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.